


Hell and Back

by Arsenic



Category: DCU (Comics), Midnighter (Comics)
Genre: Captivity, Domestic Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical Procedures, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-03-26 14:53:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19008052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/Arsenic
Summary: Midnighter goes for a morning run and doesn't come back.  Andrew calls in a favor.





	Hell and Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Panny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Panny/gifts).



> Hi recip, I really hope this speaks to you on some level, you had great letters, and I'm hoping I did your prompts some level of justice. 
> 
> Thanks to my beta, and to the mods for running this challenge.
> 
> Quick canon notes: mostly based on the Orlando runs, with definite references to Midnighter showing up in King's Grayson run, and Snyder's Batman and Robin Eternal. Except that Barbara will always be Oracle for me, I literally refuse to accept any other canon. There's vague reference to the Rebirth Detective Comics run, but it's pretty vague.

There’s a note on the fridge when Andrew wakes up. M’s handwriting is barely legible, as always, but he deciphers, “went for a run w/ jason.”

Andrew nods and smiles fondly when he sees there’s coffee in the pot, which has been left on so the drink will remain hot. He pours himself a cup, noticing the clock on the coffee maker, which informs him it’s past ten in the morning. He’s not surprised he slept so late—they’d been dealing with a minor situation up in New Hampshire (of all places) the night before—nor that M didn’t, since M doesn’t need much rest.

He’s surprised M is still out running at nearly a quarter past ten. That’s not normal.

He initiates his _smarttalk_ , but M doesn’t answer. Frowning, Andrew tries again. After a third try with no response, Andrew grabs his phone and calls Jason, who picks up on the second ring. “Hey Drew.”

“Jason, hi, are you and M still out running?”

“Uh, no. We finished up around seven-thirty. Everything okay?”

Almost definitely not. “Yeah, I’m sure it is. Sorry to bother.”

“No bother,” Jason says slowly, in a way that tells Andrew the other man isn’t buying his bullshit even just a little bit. 

“I gotta run, thanks for the update.” Andrew hangs up without waiting for a response. Almost three hours M’s not accounted for. He needs a favor.

*

“You have reached 847-808-4429, please leave a message.”

The beep sounds after the auto greeting and Andrew says, “Hi, this is Andrew Pulaski, Midnighter’s husband. I—please call back. It’s urgent.”

It’s less than ten seconds before his phone rings. Andrew picks up and says, “Drake, right? Grayson’s brother?”

“I’ll assume Dick gave you the number and move on. How can I help?”

Andrew blinks. Truth be told, he was expecting to have to leverage Grayson’s name a bit and the fact that the bats owe M. He’s not looking any gift horses in their mouths, though. “M’s missing. He went for a jog with a friend of his who lives in Allston outside of Boston this morning, but the friend said they finished three hours ago. I’ve tried connecting to him three times but I’m not even getting a…think of it as a ring. His system doesn’t work like that, but the metaphor is apt.”

“Your place is in Opal, right?” Drake asks.

“Yeah, city center.”

“All right, that gives us a radius. Let me get hold of O and I’ll see if we can’t track him through the normal hacks. I’m texting you my email address, anything you can think of that might help can be sent there, or texted to this number. In the meantime, I’ll let the rest of the family know what’s going on and see if anyone has any insight. Also, I’ll give Superman a call and ask if he’s heard anything.”

Andrew swallows. “Ah—thanks. Thank you.”

“Eh, you can thank me by convincing him we’re even when we find him.”

Andrew is surprised to hear the bark of laughter that comes from his mouth at that assertion. “Sounds fair.”

“Hanging up now, I have a missing superhero to look for.”

Andrew hits the end button. He knows the likelihood of finding anything by flying the radius they have in outward circles is between slim and none. He knows that it is more likely to simply exhaust him, and make it harder to do what needs to be done when they actually find M.

But it’s between that and sitting on his ass in their home, _their home_ , and yeah, that’s not going to work for him. He suits up and takes to the skies.

*

Midnighter takes a breath. It hurts enough that he has to struggle not to vomit in its wake. It’s not a concussion. He’s had concussions. He’s won fights and saved the world a few times through concussions.

Even thinking hurts, each element of every thought like a heated knife sinking slowly though brain matter, fat, and neurons. He can’t feel anything else. Almost as if he is nothing but his mind.

Do. Not. Panic. He thinks the words carefully, sternly.

 _What do you remember?_ It’s Andrew’s voice in his head, soft, prodding. M breathes in time to the cadence of it and forces himself to focus on the question. 

He hadn’t slept well. That’s normal. Jason and he had a running date. Also normal. They’d taken a new path, but M didn’t allow them to take the same one regularly. Good way for bad things to happen. They’d finished and M had left Jason about a block from Jason’s place. He’d gone into an alley to make a Door back to Opal, and—

M tries to recall the Door, the smell of the air, anything. There’s nothing. Like a record cutting off without so much as a scratch of the needle. Memory missing, head hurting, neural network completely offline so far as he can tell. 

_Do. Not. Fucking. Panic._

Drugs, probably. Some kind of drug he hasn’t encountered before. Alien, maybe. That’s all this is. Just drugs. Not anyone having figured out how to hack him, or the Garden having found a way to reclaim him. No. That’s—

He feels his breath hitch, causing a spike in the pain in his head. He forces himself to focus on his breathing and nothing else. Andrew will notice he’s missing, and they have friends, people who owe them favors. If the paralysis doesn’t wear off, or he can’t find a way to reboot himself, he will be found.

He’s in some kind of…it’s probably not a cave, but it has the dankness of one. There are no overhead lighting fixtures, nothing but darkness. He thinks there might be pipes, but if so they’re as black as the rest of the space, he can’t differentiate them. Maybe he’s been placed underground in order to block his signals.

He just has to stay calm and, preferably, figure out a way to beat the cavalry’s arrival. He’s calm.

*

He’s not fucking calm. There is tech hooked into ports, opened up with scalpels, sans anesthetic, in the back of his neck. Everything is agony, and he can’t even sense anyone in the room with him, although there has to be, there was cutting.

No. Robotics, that can be—

Another searing pain—he thinks the tech might be interfacing badly with his own, purposely or not, he can’t be sure—and he bites out, “What the fuck do you want?”

More important than who they are. That can come later. Possibly while he’s tearing their faces off with his teeth. 

Something makes contact with part of the casing for his embedded tech and starts firing off input to his ears, making things go haywire, the sounds of metal screeching coming from inside his head. He’s not sure how long it lasts. Long enough that he can’t think past it, can’t focus on what’s happening, can’t do anything other than try to fight against the sensation that his brain is being scrambled by his own auditory nerves.

It _does_ stop eventually, and then all he can hear are his own harsh pants, the beep of some monitor that is not in time with his heart. He swallows several times, trying to settle his nausea. The last thing he needs is to aspirate in his own vomit. 

He tries to say, “You’re all going to die very slowly,” but his lips won’t move. Fuck.

*

Andrew hasn’t been out searching an hour when his phone chimes. He hits the ear piece he’s got in. “Drake?”

A female voice says, “Batwoman, on comms at least. Friend of Red’s, he wanted a few more hands on deck. We’ve got a hit on your boy. His signature was definitely in Providence about fifteen minutes after he would have finished his run. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Rhode Island?” Andrew banks left, starting to head north. “Nothing I can imagine being pertinent to this situation.”

“Well, hit me anyway, just in case.”

Andrew does not have time to pussyfoot. “We like going to Pride there now and then. There’s something of a bathhouse scene still left in the area.”

“I mean, Nightwing said something about the guy M was dating while you guys were taking a break being an issue, so let’s not discount it, but we won’t start there.”

Andrew hadn’t realized M had mentioned that debacle to…anyone other than him, and maybe Jason, actually. It’s surprisingly useful that Grayson is read in on that one at this moment, though, so he isn’t going to complain about M’s at-times-shocking emotional maturity. “Where are we starting?”

“Pawtucket. Red and O both think the signal was bounced, and for a whole bunch of reasons, they have hypothesized that there’s a chance M’s somewhere in the neighborhood of Bridge Mill Power Plant, which they believe would interfere with a continuing read on it. At the very least, they want us to do some snooping and see if we can find anything that gives us an idea of where to go.”

“You good at the detectivating your clan is known for?”

“I’ve been known to solve a case or two in my time,” she says, dry and confident.

“Floor it, then. I’ll be there in twenty.”

“Forty,” she tells him, and drops the call.

*

Midnighter has gotten past not knowing who he was, what was stripped out of him, but there is no way in hell he will allow the awareness of his life with Andrew to be taken from his memories. He’s not sure who has him, what they are trying to accomplish, if he even figures into it, or if it’s purely about getting their hands on his tech. That should all bother him, and at some level, he’s pissed about it. Mostly, though, he’s terrified of being mind-wiped again, even accidentally.

The pain makes it hard to think, hard to do anything aside from struggle to keep breathing. He thinks anyway. He thinks of the way Andrew’s hair feels between his fingers, Andrew’s terrible, off-key renditions of Carly Simon in the shower, his love of spring, even with all the rain, the taste of his coffee—always a little too weak—the million tiny details that make Midnighter’s heart beat steadily in Andrew’s presence, make him feel like he belongs to someone.

He screams as the nerves near his shoulder blades come alive with fire, like someone has peeled back his skin there and touched taser-nodes directly to the pain receptors. As soon as his mind clears enough to be able to think of anything aside from the pain, he thinks of Andrew’s hands on his hips, large and possessive, the dry laugh Andrew tends to use when he’s holding himself back from calling someone an idiot, the grace with which Andrew does ordinary things, shit like tying shoes or putting pans away.

He will remember all these things, no matter what. He will.

*

Batwoman is there in thirty-eight minutes. She pretty much flies off the bike she’s riding and reports, “Nothing new from O or Red, you getting anything?”

Andrew shakes his head. That’s not really a surprise. If you’re a villain, and you’re going to kidnap a guy who has the ability to see three steps ahead and will end you, it seems only reasonable to take precautions against his husband’s superior senses.

“Yeah, okay, old-fashioned way it is. You have enhanced sight, correct?”

“Yes.”

“I’m gonna stay down here and do some scans on the area, can you get up high and see if you notice anything out of the ordinary? Even if it doesn’t seem like it would have anything to do with this, just…sediment in areas it shouldn’t be, architecture that doesn’t fit, little details.”

He pushes back off the ground without responding. He doesn’t know this place, and he doesn’t have the engineering acumen that would be useful right now, but he can do his best. Batwoman is mostly silent as he flies, every once in a while reporting a negative result, or something she’s going to dig further into.

It takes Andrew three passes to realize there’s something missing from the shore. It’s partly because it’s not as if anything _should_ be there. Everything looks correct. Only, there’s a reflection that doesn’t reflect correctly. That’s the wrong way to describe it, but the best Andrew can come up with. The suns rays are refracting in the wrong direction off the surface of…nothing. “Batwoman, I’ve got something.”

“Give me coordinates.”

He has to pull out his phone for that. Once he’s given her the information, she says, “Okay, give me—holy—What the fuck.”

“What do the readings look like?”

“Like…” 

Andrew hears Drake’s voice come through her comm, a little distant by clear enough. “Like someone created a black hole right there off the side of the dam.”

“Got any ideas of how to get inside the black hole?” Andrew asks.

“I’m gonna need ten,” Drake says. 

“Ones that don’t involve us turning into space matter, Red,” Batwoman says.

“Everyone’s a critic.”

Andrew swallows. He gets why M likes the kid.

*

Seven minutes and twenty-three seconds later—Andrew has to focus on _something_ besides losing his shit—Drake says, “Uh, Apollo, you see something, right? Like a reflective surface?”

“Not quite like that, but close enough.”

“You think you can use your eyes to slice through it?”

“Assuming it’s actually there, presumably. There’s plenty of sunlight.”

“I doubt it’s gonna be stealth, so you should probably have Batwoman with you when you do it. In case you need to go in fast and dirty.”

“Do we have any stealth options?” Andrew asks, mostly because it seems like he should.

“Not quick ones, and I think we can all agree time might be of the essence, here.”

Well, Andrew can agree, and that’s enough. He swoops down to where Batwoman is waiting for him and tucks her into his side, taking to the sky again. She asks, “You seen anything similar to this tech before?”

“Not exactly. But it’s kind of…it reminds me of the residue of M’s Doors.”

Drake’s voice pipes up in their ears. “Yeah, some of the signatures I’m getting are similar to God Garden tech. I think we might be dealing with an off-shoot. Could be rogue, could be endorsed.”

“Traditionally, they haven’t been big on individuality,” Andrew says.

Batwoman snorts. “No need to get all sardonic on us.”

Andrew’s reached the spot he thinks gives him the best vantage to go in from, and located the not-shimmer that indicates the barrier. He says, “This might get a little messy,” positioning Batwoman so she’s mostly behind his bulk. She has body armor, but he’s not entirely certain what kind of reactionary wave there might be when his rays make contact with the surface.

As it turns out, it’s a good thing he’s expecting a problem, because the blowback shakes even him. He manages to keep hold of and shield her from the percussive force, diving down to what appears to be a rip in space matter below them, but is probably just a break in whatever shields were up. She’s got a batarang in one hand, a taser in the other.

Strangely, though, there’s nobody guarding the gaping hole, and once inside, it looks like they’re on a subfloor of the power plant used for storage. It’s quiet. Drake says, “Uh, guys?”

“Clear,” Batwoman tells him quietly.

Andrew can hear M, though. It’s muffled, which means there’s probably a few levels of earth and possibly metal reinforcements between them. He knows for certain it’s below where they are, though. He looks down and bores a hole through the floor, continuing to do so until he’s clearly on the right level. Batwoman has been following him by grapple rope. 

The scientist—and yeah, if the gear is anything to go by, Drake is right, this is a rogue Garden offshoot that had the right drugs and got lucky enough to manage to drop M—gets off three shots before Batwoman’s there and has him writhing on the ground, electric currents making clear pathways over his body. There’s another tech who’s also trying to shoot at them, although he has the sense to make Batwoman, who’s at least human, his target. Andrew throws him across the room on his path to M, not really caring all that much whether his actions are lethal.

Now that things are quiet, Batwoman asks the question that’s bothering him. “These guys managed to bag Midnighter?”

Andrew shakes his head, considering the wiring running in and out of M. “I’m guessing they’re just the brains of the operation. They probably took out a delivery contract, and gave whomever they hired whatever’s in the IV that’s keeping him quiescent. Either they thought we wouldn’t find them here, or they thought we wouldn’t figure out a way in. Or they just couldn’t afford to pay guards.”

She tilts her head. “Don’t suppose you know how to, uh, unplug him?”

Andrew shakes his head. He’s assessing the situation, but he’s pretty sure M’s not aware of his surroundings. Other than the occasional sounds of pain, he’s not indicating that he’s conscious, his eyes fluttering in a disturbed REM pattern. Andrew touches his fingers to M’s palm and the hand doesn’t even twitch. 

He removes the IV. Even if it’s got a painkiller in it—Andrew doesn’t think it does, given that M is clearly in pain—whatever else is in it is powerful enough to be sedating M, possibly paralyzing him, and there aren’t a hell of a lot of substances that can manage that. Nothing good.

Andrew says, “Red, if I can get your eyes on this, think you can help me disconnect his computer from their wires?”

Drake makes a noise. “That’s a little outside my area of expertise, let me see if we can wire the doc in as well. Her, O, and I can do our best.”

Batwoman speaks up. “I’ve got the equipment, Red, you get O and doc on the line.”

Andrew folds one of M’s hands in his own, figuring that way he will feel if M starts to move again, but also just wanting the anchoring sensation of their skin in contact. He mutters, “I am giving you _so_ much shit about your situational awareness when you wake up. So much.”

He just needs M to wake up, is all.

*

Midnighter _hears _Andrew. He just can’t seem to indicate that. If he couldn’t hear himself whining every time the pain crescendos, he wouldn’t be sure he could even make noise. He definitely can’t control any of the muscles in his mouth.__

__Andrew’s talking with a woman whose voice is not familiar. M is anchoring himself in the sound, the best thing he thinks he’s ever heard. After a while Andrew asks, “Are we ready?”_ _

__Whomever he’s asking isn’t in the room. There’s a pause and he says to the woman, “Can you—”_ _

__“Yeah, let me get them on the screen. O can probably hack the cameras then and we’ll be in business.”_ _

__O. Andrew went and called in a favor with the Bats, evidently. Another wave of blinding—literally, what vision Midnighter has at the moment whitens out—pain rolls through him, likely the tech still trying to ferret its way in through robotics, now without anyone controlling it. He must instinctively tighten his fingers somewhat around Andrew’s, because Andrew squeezes back and says, “Hey, hey there. If you can hear me, I think the sedative is wearing off, but we’ve got to get this stuff disconnected, and for obvious reasons, you need to do your best to stay still.”_ _

__Midnighter suspects the logical thing would have been to have kept him on the paralytic, but he doubts he’d have been able to do that to Andrew, were their rolls reversed. Thankfully, he has a high pain tolerance, and is motivated to help them get this shit out of his brain. He does his best to squeeze his fingers in response. He’s not certain if he succeeds._ _

__A female voice crackles over the speakers. “Red, I need you to refocus the cameras you’ve got labeled two and four so I can see as much of the underside of the patient’s head as possible.”_ _

__It’s only a few seconds before a voice Midnighter does recognize, Drake, says, “That any better?”_ _

__“I’ll make do. Batwoman, I’ll need you to relay some information to me. You’re going to be my hands.”_ _

__If Midnighter had control of his eyebrows, he’d probably raise one. Sure, he knows Drake runs with Kane pretty often these days, but he would have expected any of the boys, Cain, or Brown, before Kane, who’s never met him and doesn’t owe him a damn thing._ _

__“What about—“ Andrew starts._ _

__The woman, who’s probably Dr. Thompkins, says, “You stay where you are. Help him remain as calm as possible.”_ _

__Andrew must nod, or otherwise acknowledge the command. The doctor says, “All right O, Red, what kind of neural readings are you able to access?”_ _

__Another woman, undoubtedly the vaunted Oracle, says, “Without risking frying circuits or causing other damage in what’s not a familiar system, the best I can give you is this: there are five ports that are interfacing tech. Two of them seem to be hooked into the actual, uh, operating system, for lack of an easier way to make it lay-person friendly. The other three are harder to figure out. One seems to be hooked into the vitals monitoring element, so they might just have been keeping track of his readings, although, that seems like an unduly complicated way to get there. The other two…I think they might be AI bots. And I’m concerned that they’re data mining, which means it’s going to be nearly impossible to figure out what system they’re interfacing with, not to mention whether cutting off the data flow might cause unintended consequences.”  
“Would you say the monitoring one is probably the easiest place to start?” the doctor asks. Midnighter is reluctantly impressed by how calm she is. Like she does this shit every day._ _

__“Least risky, yes. Easiest? No idea, that’s what you’re here for.”_ _

__Midnighter would probably laugh if it weren’t for…well, everything. The doctor says, “Okay Batwoman, you’re up. Did you find the stuff I told you to look for while we were setting up?”_ _

__“Yup, and sterilized it the way you said to.”_ _

__“Excellent. Here’s what you’re going to do.”_ _

__Midnighter is actually a little lulled by how competently the doctor is explaining things to Kane. Then Kane starts following the instructions and Midnighter has to switch his focus to just trying to breathe and not allowing himself to vomit, which would probably force his head to move and cause bigger problems than he already has._ _

____

*

M screams toward the end of the removal of the third wire, the second one lodged in what Oracle is calling the operating system of his fight computer. It’s cut off and strained, his fingers tightening around Andrew’s, enough to break a human’s. Andrew isn’t human.

M manages, though, despite all of this, to stay still. Andrew puts his free hand on the skin of M’s stomach, and does his best to pour reassurance through the touch. There’s nothing he can think of to say that will help.

The doctor says, “Well, fuck.”

Andrew looks up. “Keep going. He can handle it.”

M squeezes his hand again, more gently this time. Andrew is going to have new nightmares for years. And that’s assuming the best. He knows damn well none of them are certain, probably least of all M himself, that this is going to work, and leave M alive and functioning. Andrew wonders distractedly if anyone in the Justice League sees a therapist, and if that person might have recommendations. 

He wants to talk to M. Oracle and the doc need to guide Batwoman through what she’s doing, though, and Andrew can’t even say that it would help any more than his touch is. It’s hell. No. Andrew has been to hell and back. This is worse.

M’s crying what are clearly completely involuntary tears, every single breath choked out. His hand will squeeze and then go completely lifeless as something deadens his nerves, shuddering back into action once the system comes back online.

Andrew loses track of time. All he knows is that it takes hours. When the final wire is completely free of M’s head, M immediately pushes Andrew back, rolls to his side, and vomits onto the floor. The doctor says, “Midnighter, now that there’s nothing that might cause interference to your brain waves or nervous system, I’m going to have Batwoman give you a sedative that works on a few of the League’s metas. If it works, you’ll sleep for a bit, and we’ll sew you up while you’re under. If it doesn’t, we’ll see if something local will work. Are you all right with that plan?

M pulls Andrew back, threads his fingers in Andrews, and says, “Shoot me up.”

*

The sedative must work, because the next thing Midnighter knows, he’s waking up with the worst migraine of his life, but the air smells of fresh-baked bread, he’s naked, and the sheets he’s on are 600-thread count. Home. He’s not certain he wants to try and speak. Not just because it seems likely to exacerbate the headache, but because there’s a tiny part of him that’s worried something went wrong and his vocal chords won’t work. He can delay worrying about anything else, since, so far as he can tell, he can feel all his body parts and wiggle his fingers and toes.

Eventually, he takes a slow, deep breath, and murmurs, “Drew?”

The movement in the other room is immediate. Andrew steps into the bedroom and says, “Hey,” in what is probably a completely normal decibel level. M takes a moment to breath through the pain it causes. Andrew climbs into bed and plays big spoon, whispering, “Sorry.”

“Migraine.”

“Mm. Water?”

Probably a good idea. “Innabit,” he mumbles, and burrows deeper into the heat and familiarity of Andrew’s body.

*

Andrew feels the moment M falls asleep again. He needs to get up. He has plans to make a number of dishes that will be easy to digest, as well as give M a nice boost of carbs and protein. He buries his face in M’s neck. There’s no scent of blood on him anymore. Andrew knows when he takes the bandages from M’s head that there will not even be a trace of scarring.

It’s been this way for as long as either of them can, or cares to, remember. And yet it is something Andrew never seems to become accustomed to, the space between what is left behind after these experiences and what actually remains on the surface, to be seen.

He relaxes his hold. He’s strong enough that he can damage M. Just because M will heal isn’t reason enough not to care. 

He needs to get up. Midnighter’s fine, he is safe, he is in their fucking bedroom, for fuck’s sake.

It’s another ten minutes before he pulls his phone out of his back pocket and types one-handedly to Drake: “Have ne1 near Opal?”

Drake’s response is almost immediate. “Can. What do u need?”

“Food run.”

“Send a list. It’ll be Cass or Jay. Key them into your security?”

“Y, thnx.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Andrew won’t. He’ll just put it in his ledger, and pay up when the time comes.

*

Midnighter stumbles into his kitchen to the sight of Cassandra Cain emptying take-out bags onto their island, Andrew fiddling with their teapot, and Jason Todd rifling through their cabinets. He blinks and croaks out, “Are we having a party?”

“Hey babe,” Andrew says without turning around. “Ginger or clove?”

For the record, there’s only one person in the world M lets ignore him in this way, but Andrew’s that person, so, “Ginger.”

Cass has slipped over to stand right in front of him, her dark eyes watching him in evident concern. He musses her hair and asks, “What’d you bring me?”

She grins, giving him the glass of water she’s holding, and going back over to the island to open up a plastic soup container. The smell of bun bo hue from the place M loves in the suburbs on the north side of Opal fills the air. M gives up on dignity and just makes grabby hands. 

She points regally to one of the chairs at the island and he takes the direction. Todd says, “Fucking finally, who the fuck keeps their silverware on a lazy susan?”

He plunks a spoon in the container and pushes it toward M. Andrew says, “People who are good at organization.”

“I don’t think that word means what you think it means,” Todd tells him, and the two of them are off, bickering quietly about kitchens and someone named Marie Kondo and probably many other things M gives no shits about at this moment. He focuses on the heat of the soup, draining the water only to find it refilled the next time he reaches for it. Cass gives him the smile of a co-conspirator.

At some point Andrew brings M the tea, steeped just the way he likes it, almost to bitterness, but not quite. He stands behind M, which works out, since no sooner has M finished the soup, the tea, and probably his fifth glass of water, he’s falling asleep again. Andrew rests his hands on M’s shoulders, stays sturdy as M leans back into him.

He kisses the top of M’s head and says, “Nap, I need you to help me kick Todd’s ass when you wake up.”

M laughs, his eyes already shut. He means to say, “Bet you could manage on your own,” but he doubts he gets the words to form.

*

Midnighter wakes that night with a gasp that brings Andrew out of REM sleep. Andrew says, “Breathe,” without even thinking first.

“Fuck,” Midnighter says on an exhale. He leans forward, pressing his forehead into his knees.

Andrew rubs at his back. “Hot bath?”

“With jets,” M agrees.

Andrew rolls out of bed and goes to run the water. He’s not surprised the tub is nearly full when M saunters in, attempting to look steady and not really managing. He’s already naked, having stripped somewhere between the bed and the bathroom. Andrew says, “Lemme get in first.”

He sinks in and tugs M in, positioning them so M can use him as a pillow. After a few minutes of silence, Andrew asks, “Normal nightmare or new one?”

“Amalgamation. Why do anything by halves, I always say.”

Andrew laughs softly into M’s hair. “You’re an overachiever, for sure.”

“Most of the time,” M says. He stops and then starts again. “Most of the time being something the Garden made doesn’t bother me. I don’t allow it because if I did—”

“You’d never move on,” Andrew says, having figured this out a while ago, maybe even while they were broken up, and he’d started wondering if his reaction to M’s lies had been completely fair.

“That, and I could never be anything _but_ that.”

Andrew disagrees. He doesn’t say anything, though, just squeezes M a bit.

M nuzzles at his shoulder. “Sometimes. Sometimes it’s hard to feel like anything more. Like I have any choice in anything.”

“M. Did you know I’d come?”

“Yes. If you could, you’d come, yes. I knew that.”

“So you knew, where it mattered, that someone loved you? That _I_ loved you?”

There’s a beat. “I hadn’t thought in those terms, but yeah, I guess.”

“Do you honestly believe I could love a machine of the Garden? A tool? Nothing more?”

There’s a long pause, but Andrew knows M is turning things over in his mind, considering all the angles to that question. Finally, M says, “That’s an excellent point.”

“Happens every now and then.”

“Andrew?”

“Yeah, babe.”

“To hell and back, with us. That’s the way it is, right?”

“Always,” Andrew says, and means it every bit as much as the vow he made in front of the judge, the one that earned him the ring on his finger.

“Okay.” M nods.

“You gonna fall asleep in the bath?”

“Prolly.”

Andrew smirks. “Guess I’ll make sure you don’t drown then.”

“That’s why I love you, right there,” M tells him.


End file.
